On Trial

A letter in response to Janet Malcolm’s article (May 3, 2010)

Early in my career as an attorney, a judge, who was well respected in the community, did to one of my clients something akin to what Judge Sidney Strauss did to Mazoltuv Borukhova. In a hearing ostensibly intended to deal with a husband’s physical abuse of his wife, the judge ordered that custody be transferred to the husband because the wife admitted to getting home late on the night she was abused. That situation ended peacefully when the parties agreed to a custody and visitation arrangement, but the shock I felt when that judge made his ruling resurfaced while I was reading Malcolm’s piece. It may be a platitude, but judges are human, just like all the players on the justice team, and even juries cannot protect against the finality of a judge’s power. Too often, that power can cause unintended, unforeseen harm, and Malcolm’s story brings that home starkly.